Monthly Archives: September 2007

The Global War On Terror is misnamed. Terror is a tactic, not the name of an enemy. And it’s not really global. America is not at war with LTTE terrorists in Sri Lanka or Basque terrorists in Spain. Why can’t we name the enemy and correctly name this war?

Why has America fought this war with both hands tied behind it’s back?

Why didn’t President Bush ask for a formal declaration of war on 9/12?

Because the answers contain painful truths that few in authority care to voice.

This blog is mostly about civilian volunteers assuming the domestic counterpropaganda mission the United States Government has been rendered incapable of performing. I’ve discussed in previous posts how our defenders have failed us on the psychological front. Morale Operations are being conducted against the American domestic target audience and our leaders don’t want to talk about that because doing anything about it would cost them precious political capital squabbling with domestic enemies who profit from it.

All enemies can’t really be effectively opposed when their freedom of speech and civil rights are paramount. Some of my fellow citizens think unlawful combatants disarmed on the battlefield and transported to Gitmo not only deserve, they are owed all the rights of citizens. Other fellow citizens agree with me that summary execution is the proper disposition of such cases. This disagreement over what to do with prisoners is just one of many deep and fundamental fissures in the American body politic that our domestic enemies partner with our foreign enemies to widen. Our enemies understand our weaknesses perfectly and exploit them very well. Our leaders downplay our divisions to avoid bringing too much attention to their weakness and ours, thus nobody goes on trial for treason or sedition, everybody gets to say whatever they want without personal consequences no matter how damaging, and the opposing camps within America grow ever more disgusted with each other.

We who would attempt to neutralize and mitigate the damage done by the enemy’s propaganda must understand that the enemy in this war owes much of his success in spreading cynicism, pessimism, distrust and division to the information operations preparation of the battlefield achieved by the enemy in the last war. And that enemy’s sympathizers use positions of power to carp, criticize, oppose, obstruct, cast aspersions on and otherwise retard progress towards victory. Violent radical Islamicists aren’t our only enemies in this war, they are just the enemies our military can deal with kinetically.

Victory, they say, has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. Some of us refused to abandon it.

Some of us did indeed refuse to accept defeat. Some of that was plain old Jacksonian stubborness, and some of it was faith. We kept the faith with our nation’s warriors. We knew deep down that what we were being told was not the whole story. And we believed that our nation was a force for good in this world, and that the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines sent forth to break militant Islamicists of their homocidal habits were the best human beings this Republic had to offer .

We almost lost the war. Not on the battle field, but right here at home. As General Lynch recently said, the reason people thought it was being lost and now appears to be miraculously won? The media, with its central editorial boards “shaping American opinion” told everyone it was so. And, at least half of the American population was unaware because they had no idea they were being sold a bill of goods. They didn’t disconnect from the “Matrix”.

We have all been the victims of a massive psychological operation. Even those of us who resisted. Our faith in our armed forces remains unshaken, but our faith in government, media, academia, elites, and many of our fellow citizens has plummeted. Many of us no longer look to government for solutions. Some of us are empowering ourselves.

The reason that you are failing, the reason the stock in your companies continues to dwindle, the reason that you missed the true story of Iraq in lieu of “the narrative”, the reason that a sitting president invited bloggers to the White House, however limited in its actual journalistic moments that you claim as “real” journalism, is because you and your kind became “the Matrix”; alternate reality created by you and others like you. You are no longer independent. You are no longer individuals seeking “the truth”.

You started believing your own press that you were the people that “protected” the people from the power of the government. You were ‘objective” you said. You told the “truth” you said. All the while you abdicated your self-appointed responsibilities to foreign unknown, ideologically and ethically challenged stringers rarely ever telling your viewers and readers where it came from. You claim you don’t bow down to powers, you bring them down, while all along central editorial boards told you what to write, what was acceptable. They stacked the deck with people like you to “shape the narrative” and “shape public opinion”.

You’re no longer independent, but a slave to the Matrix. What can you do but complain like petty demagogues who fear their throne has been threatened and belittle others who dare to disconnect from the Matrix?

We are at war. Several wars. The outcome of all of them depends on control of the key terrain, the battle space between the ears of the American voter. And for a whole lot of reasons explained elsewhere on this blog, this key terrain has been left undefended. Will and morale are essential elements of national power that must be defended, if not by Regulars, than by us.

Cannoneer is in between contracts, so I have been forced –, I mean I want to watch TV with him, so I watch a lot of stuff that I normally would not watch. History Channel, Military Channel, History Channel International, Discovery Channel. I normally watch, when I’m not reading, Fox News, BBC America (I love Britcoms), American Movie Classics — when it’s not John Wayne month), Turner Classic Movies for silly romances and film noir, and Boomerrang for cartoons. I watch a lot of cartoons — because there is rarely anything worth watching.

So for the last three years I have not had to watch what a man’s man would watch.

Well now I can tell you what channel we are on just by the commercials — on the manly shows I am forced to hear about ED problems until I couldn’t really care less if anyone ever has it. There are three kinds of ED pills and boy do they flog the heck out of them. Also beer is on the Manly Channels along with big expensive autos and meat commercials.

On the Female Channels I see “Boy, are you old, you need this lotion so your man will have sex with you” — or

“Lord have mercy, you are so fat you need this diet”

The American advertising industry is driving me nuts with the I’m so old and fat that I need whatever they are selling Chinese water torture.

Why can’t we drive defeatists nuts with the truth about how well our boys are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan or how we need everyone’s help to keep our hearts and minds open to the possibility of victory?

These Quislings are out in the open, now. They are on record. They do not think General Petraeus deserves the full support of the Senate and they do not condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces.

These people are part of our government. These people have the power to destroy any officer or Other Government Agency employee who tries to protect the American people from enemy propaganda. These people are the reason the Regulars can’t do counterpropaganda.

“Kill a Commie for Mommy” was a tattoo I admired in my youth. I never got the tattoo, but I did devote a significant portion of my young life to the art and science of killing Communist armored vehicles. Did we really win the Cold War? Doesn’t seem like it. The Commies just changed their names. And the American Fifth Column’s ideological affinity with the enemy is out of the closet. Some convergence:

Al Qaeda’s ideology is the lineal descendant of a school of thought articulated most compellingly by the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s

Qutb blended a radical interpretation of Muslim theology with the Marxism-Leninism and anticolonial fervor of the Egypt of his day to produce an Islamic revolutionary movement.

Qutb was familiar with the concept of the Bolshevik party as the “vanguard of the proletariat”–the small group that understood the interests of the proletariat better than the workers themselves, that would seize power in their name, then would help them to achieve their own “class consciousness” while creating a society that was just and suitable for them. Qutb thought of his ideology in the same terms: He explicitly referred to his movement as a vanguard that would seize power in the name of the true faith and then reeducate Muslims who had gone astray. — Al Qaeda In IraqHow to understand it. How to defeat it.

But wait, there’s more:

Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst. — Islam, the Marxism of Our Time

Stay with me now:

Multiculturalism and political correctness are two of the fundamental pseudo-intellectual, quasi-religious tenets that have been widely disseminated by intellectuals unable to abandon socialism even after its crushing failures in the 20th century. Along with a third component, radical environmentalism, they make up three key foundations of leftist dogma that have been slowly, but relentlessly, absorbed at all levels of Western culture in the last decade or so–but primarily since the end of the Cold War.

It just so happens, that these tenets (multiculturalism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism) represent three of the four pillars that are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist remnants in the world have conceptualized and implemented to prevent their ideology from entering the dustbin of history.Islam And Marxism — A Marriage Made In Allah’s Socialist Paradise

Almost done:

Both Marxism and Islamism, with their emphasis on Utopian goals which promise to end disappointment and deprivation while directing condoned rage against the external world of oppressors, share this structure. They facilitate defensive externalization, allow for the free expression of primitive rage, and promise a Utopian consummation, either in an earthly paradise where all desires, material and sexual, can be achieved, or in the heavenly Paradise where the 72 virgins await. This is the attraction of Islam and Marxism to so many disaffected young people.

Rage at a cruel and withholding universe (often a derivative of infantile frustration) is difficult to tolerate. Most of us, with good-enough parenting, come to temper our infantile frustrations (which have roots in our infantile grandiosity which is so painful to give up) by using our loving ties to our parents to metabolize the rage which would otherwise be so destructive. Those unfortunates who cannot do so via love are left enraged and searching for ways to offload the rage to an external victim. Ideologies that enable such offloading attract the angry and the failed and it is through this pathway that Marx (the angry, anti-Semitic hater of religion) and the Islamists (descended from Qutb, the angry, anti-Semitic hater of secularism) find their true identity. Islam and Marxism and Unmetabolized Rage

America IS at war, but too many Americans don’t know it, and too many of those that do are on the wrong side. American success in the Middle East will be disastrous for the Left, which is why they work so hard to prevent it. The Cultural War and the War On Terror are intertwined.

I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.

I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again…and yet, I too, am just a boy….my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid…because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and it is always there.

There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own…but that are necessary for survival. I’ve made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this. Miles from me are my brethren in this world, who walk in the same streets…who feel the same things, whether they admit to it or not.

And to think, I volunteered for this…

And I am ignorant to the rest of the world…or so I thought.

But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi, Iraq, the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn’t fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America, and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.

I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the word boys and girls, because that’s what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class.

People like Cindy Sheehan are ignorant. Not just to this war, but to the results of their idiotic ramblings, or at least I hope they are. They don’t realize its effects on this war. In this war, there are no Geneva Conventions, no cease fires. Medics and Chaplains are not spared from the enemy’s brutality because it’s against the rules. I can only imagine the horrors a military Chaplain would experience at the hands of the enemy. The enemy slinks in the shadows and fights a coward’s war against us. It is effective though, as many men and women have died since the start of this war. And the memory of their service to America is tainted by the inconsiderate remarks on our nation’s news outlets. And every day, the enemy changes…only now, the enemy is becoming something new. The enemy is transitioning from the Muslim extremists to Americans. The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it. But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society…and they are becoming our enemy.

Democrats and peace activists like to toss the word “quagmire” around and compare this war to Vietnam. In a way they are right, this war is becoming like Vietnam. Not the actual war, but in the isolation of country and military. America is not a nation at war; they are a nation with its military at war. Like it or not, we are here, some of us for our second, or third times; some even for their fourth and so on. Americans are so concerned now with politics, that it is interfering with our war.

Terrorists cut the heads off of American citizens on the internet…and there is no outrage, but an American soldier kills an Iraqi in the midst of battle, and there are investigations, and sometimes soldiers are even jailed…for doing their job.

It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this. Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we’ve done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It’s all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of President Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.

America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It’s not like World War II, where people rationed food and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a servicemember, its life as usual…the war doesn’t affect you.

But it affects us. And when it is over and the troops come home and they try to piece together what’s left of them after their service…where will the detractors be then? Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can’t touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.

We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause and see it to its end. But the country must unite in this endeavor…we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It’s supporting our President, our troops and our cause.

Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn’t.

Let’s stop all the political nonsense, let’s stop all the bickering, let’s stop all the bad news and let’s stand and fight!